Understanding Indian Communism IT is the business of social scientists to explain not only what happens in history but often, what does not happen. By asking the question 'why X did not happen?', we are in Tact, simultaneously stating that it should have happened. This 'should' however, needs to be amplified. It does not refer to any normative or moral imperative, but arises from an implicit understanding that given certain conditions. X could have been an expected outcome, There are, of course, no logical necessities in history, but always a range of possibilities immanent in any given situation, and not all of them are even empirical possibilities. These possibilities may or may not materialise, depending upon a number of factors. While possibilities or potentialities are determined by longer-term and deeper forces at work for instance, the dialectic of productive forces and production relations, the level of development of class forces or structures of domination, in any given society at any given time -the aciualisation of those possibilities follows an entirely different logic. Accidents, contingencies and. above all, the strategic relations of farces all fusing into a given conjuncture, play the most crucial role in this regard What is of critical importance here is how far the political formations 'representing' various class forces correspond to the demands of the situation. The accident of who lead these political formations, too, can be of utmost significance in determining the course of events.
